


Reburn

by kkamagui



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Demons, M/M, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:54:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24846379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kkamagui/pseuds/kkamagui
Summary: The difference between a gwisin and a demon, both eternally damned beings,  is that one hungers for purpose, and the other justhungers.
Relationships: The Drifter/Shin Malphur
Comments: 1
Kudos: 20





	Reburn

**Author's Note:**

> its hot n humid so im projecting my want for [melona](https://www.melonaicecream.com/) and [b.b.big bar](http://eng.bing.co.kr/brand/icecream/1149) on shin bc this is my city
> 
> set in seoul

* * *

Shin hasn’t seen the topside of Insadong proper in what feels like weeks.

Realistically it might only have been a day or two. But on the underside, the constructs of time and space and all never really mesh together as well as they do in the mortal realm.

He grits his teeth and wades through murk, eyes blazing like two stars in the night. The red ties of Osiris’ amulet are wrapped tight around his fingers, digging in sharper than a dagger’s edge. Intact, despite his fire. Shin does not dare let go; he knows the only thing keeping his soul tethered in the mess of nothing and everything is the borrowed time clenched in his hand.

The portal out flickers in the distance. Not much longer left, and it’s getting so cold Shin can hardly feel his limbs. Again, his search had been fruitless. As he had expected, but well. _Hope_.

The bones crunching beneath his feet feel more like ash and ice. He turns around and trudges back to the shattering seams of reality. In one half a second he is a hair's breadth from the threshold between stillness and the moving world; in the other half his body sinks past the darkness into a numbing flash of white static.

Shin falls, headfirst, out of the underside and back into the realm of the living. Right into an alley full of trash bags.

“Look at you,” he hears Jaren say, fondness bleeding through stern words, and the sound of his voice makes Shin’s demon heart pound louder than olden rituals. “Up, now.” He extends a hand and Shin reaches up to take it-

Grasps thin air. Shin blinks the remnant sparks from his vision and sighs. Picks himself up out of the garbage heap and back onto solid footing. A sticky Melona wrapper clings to his shoes. Yellow, cyan and magenta lights flicker on his right, reflected in puddles of water from this morning’s downpour, spelling out backward the name of the bar nearby.

Shin closes his eyes and breathes in. There is the smell of greasy meat from local grills, the distinct coolant of overworked AC units and, there—the familiar burn of his ilk. He is in friendly territory, then. For the most part. Still, he takes the effort to quench the flames and sort himself into a figure more befitting of a human. If a mortal does catch sight of him, at least they won’t notice anything terribly off.

Now that he is not surrounded by ice and chill and void, Shin’s body decides to remind him of hunger. He feels tired, in both the hungry way, and also in the bone-deep, would-rather-sink-into-an-active-volcano-than-perceive-his-own-existence kind of way.

The air is muggy despite the late hour, thick and humid with the worst of monsoon season. Shin thrives in the heat, sure. Is made of it, even. But he despises the humidity. Marcus likes to joke that he is better suited for the desert, rather than a land surrounded by so much water.

He dips past PC room smokedens and closed bookstores, heading for the underground restaurant known for its clientele of decidedly non-mortals, right in the heart of Hongdae. Once he passes the gold-red wards lining the doorway, he lets out a deep breath and stops caring whether his body passes as a human’s or not.

Shin’s eyes glow brighter than fire, but the worker tending bar seems unfazed by them. Gives him a curious once over, then turns back to busy himself while Shin peruses the menu halfheartedly. Shin recognizes the guy as Wu Ming, some vampire with a nasty knack for flirting with every bit of danger he comes across. 

After a minute of trying to decide which ramen to order, Shin realizes that he hasn’t come here with his mortal guise so undone before. 

“You ordering or what, brother?” asks the vampire, leaning against the counter opposite Shin. His blue stare is intent and chilling.

Shin looks up, not missing the glass of dark red liquid by the vampire’s hand. It reeks of blood. “Number six,” he says. “Extra spicy. ‘N you should think about investing in the self-order machines every other place has.”

“Ain’t nobody ask for your opinion,” Wu Ming sneers, teeth glinting, none of the pleasant smiles Shin remembers from visits when he had looked and smelled human. He turns his head to yell the order at the other cook before going right back to staring at Shin. “What’s a nasty heatwave like you doing here this time of night?”

It’s information Wu Ming wants, then. The usual. Clearly he does not recognize Shin past all the fire coiling in and around his soul. It almost seems he is really bothered by it, like he imagines himself centimeters away from a fatal encounter with sunlight.

“Searching for someone,” Shin finally says. Wu Ming drinks from his cup, tongue darting out to clear any red from his lips. “Someone very difficult to find.”

“I could make it real easy,” Wu Ming says after a small pause, keeping his eyes unreadable though his lips hitch into a tempting grin. He does not move when Shin leans forward onto the bar, but Shin notices the tension along his shoulders, like he’s forcing himself still.

Shin waits a moment. Wu Ming stays still, his nostrils flaring like he’s getting his first real smell of Shin. After another moment of looking Wu Ming straight in the eyes, Shin says, “You gonna give your paying customer a glass of water, or what?”

Tension bleeds out from Wu Ming’s shoulders as he turns around, rolling his eyes. Shin looks down at his hands, where traces of the amulet burned into his skin remain as crisp black lines over and around his fingers. He smells like ash. He smells like nothing. The unending silence of death chases away all other sound until his thoughts are filled with static.

Shin reaches for the packaged hand wipes by the soy sauce and red pepper, and tries to scrub the black scars away.

* * *

He doesn’t go hunting for Shadows anymore.

Well, not as he used to, anyway. Most of them are already dead, or they’re cautious enough to tread shallower waters. Now he simply just—exists. And simultaneously does not, when he is off searching. Sometimes, the blaze needs to be snuffed out.

Seongdo finds him near the guarded seams of un/reality, tying more time and undoing around his fingers with the same careless rush as someone about to bleed their knuckles out on a punching bag. The gwisin patrols these edges of the world, forever searching for the last thing he’s supposed to do. Insatiable. Pious.

“Malphur,” says Seongdo, the outline of his transparent form appearing as no more than scant whiteness in the near black. His voice is no more than an echo in Shin’s head, both soundless and clear as a cool stream of mountain water. “You’re here again.”

Shin looks up at the gwisin’s eyeless, noseless, mouthless face. The back of his neck feels as though something is crawling over it. He blinks unseeingly at the red tied around his hands like threads of his own blood.

“Still looking?” he asks no one in particular.

Seongdo shakes his head. Shin closes his eyes, sees the negative image of a ghost and a void. A white space and black terror.

“Those talismans won’t last forever,” Seongdo says. “You’ve seen the ends too many times.”

“I haven’t seen _enough_ ,” Shin snaps.

The dead do not come back, he knows this. Knows that if they do, they do not come back as themselves. Only as an empty slate, clean and free for whatever cruel hand decides to rewrite who and what they are. Incomplete husks with hardly a will of their own and the direction of some sort of prayer.

Shin isn’t looking for a remedy to death; he just wants to catch the strands of what remains. Wants to bring an end to what would end all he had known.

Hovering by Shin’s shoulder, Seongdo makes a motion as though he is sighing heavily, though it is noiseless. “How can I help?”

Sometimes Shin wonders if Seongdo will ever find his purpose like he is meant to. He’s been around as long as Shin has known him, as pale as moonlight, a portent of nonexistence. Wonders if there _is_ no purpose, and the gwisin is being strung along by whatever he worships to exist until the end of days and nights and stars.

Shin exhales and feels the facsimile of human skin burn away until there is nothing left but a ravenous flame. He can hardly see Seongdo, now. He says something that comes out like thunder and the gwisin only nods, drifts to the side to reveal the endless stretch of darkness broken only by a line of green-white fire.

*

Shin goes back for his fix of noodles again, keeping his mortal glamour wrapped tight around him. It’s less for others’ benefit. He smells like char and spark and blood, and he is sick of it. At least he can pretend he didn’t just come back from sinking through deaths of terrible stars and beasts colder than dark.

He isn’t alone when he sits as his usual corner at the bar; Wu Ming is already there with one of his charming smiles.

“Hey, you,” he says, leaning on one arm, fangs glinting. “You’re late.”

“Been busy,” Shin says, thanking him for the glass of iced barley tea. He doesn’t really taste anything, only registers the chill that slips down his throat and tries and fails to still the hellfire within.

  
“Couldn’t even spare me a short visit?” Wu Ming’s eyes are glittering, almost luminescent in the moody lighting. “After all I cook up for you. For _free_.”

Shin leans back into his seat, eyeing the lack of blood on the counter. “Here I thought you just had good service.”

  
“Good _taste_ , brother.”

There is intent in that statement. More intent than ever before, anyway. Shin gives Wu Ming an unreadable look, staring long enough the vampire shifts minutely under his gaze.

“All right, all right, I’ll bite,” says Wu Ming, raising his hands in mock surrender. He starts fiddling with one of the strings on his apron absentmindedly, still leaning over the counter to give Shin a good look down his unbuttoned shirt. “Just curious, is all. Always walking in looking and smelling like any other mortal when everyone knows you’re not. Any undersider with half a brain, at least.”

The other cook walks over with Shin’s usual order, extra meat piled generously on top. Gives Wu Ming an annoyed look before heading off to the stoves again. Shin piles on the extra red pepper while Wu Ming watches, thirsting for a proper answer, or at least a hint.

“Might not be a good idea,” Shin says, stirring the noodles and broth until the peppers give it a muted orange tinge. “Biting me, I mean.”

Wu Ming grins. “Always did like a challenge.” His eyes flicker with the colors of the monitor behind Shin playing some senseless crime drama with a pretty lead. The blue disappears under green-white-red-yellow, but remerges, unwavering. Shin continues chewing through the noodles and meat, waiting for Wu Ming to talk himself out. “Think you owe it to me, after disappearing for days and weeks, only to pop in an hour before my shift ends like nothing’s wrong.”

“Is something wrong?” Shin asks.

Gone is Wu Ming’s smile. He looks dead serious when he says, “You’re tired.”

“I could come during daytime hours,” Shin says dryly. He sets his chopsticks down, rubbing some feeling back into his left hand’s fingers. No one can see the black scars burnt into his flesh, but he knows they are there. Wu Ming doesn’t miss the motion and watches curiously. Shin sets his hand back down, fingers itching and burning. He reaches over for his half-empty cup of tea and finishes it in one go.

Wu Ming smirks invitingly, and refills Shin’s glass to the brim.

* * *

Oftentimes Shin will—in his dreams that are not dreams—see hundreds of shattered hourglasses lain neatly in rows, dripping and leaking and bleeding into the invisible, formless devourer beneath them. Filled and half-filled and emptied of colorful sands and white sparking rivers, burning with cold green heat that drips slowly and thickly like drying blood.

He is borrowing more than just time. Shin is borrowing—no, he is _taking_ life and breath from those that burn with the coldest, dirtiest flames. Taking their energy as kindling, drinking deep from the vast, icy cosmos.

There are traces of others skirting the underrealms as he does, though most are cautious about venturing deep. Some are not, and he takes from them, too. Shin pushes his luck even with the amulets scoring black lines into his skin, clamping down on his fire like an all-devouring eclipse.

“You need to stop,” says Jaren. Shin’s lying on his back just past his near undoing, catching his breath as his vision is overcome with fire of his own and fire all consuming. Breaths catch in his throat, thicker than smoke and twice as dark. He inhales air and spits out embers, burning hot and hotter. “Shin.”

He blinks, unable to differentiate between the darkness behind his eyelids and the emptiness around him. “Jaren,” he says, but his voice is unrecognizable to himself. He sounds like storms and fiery hells and an unraveling. The frenzy in and around himself flickers between gold and nightmarish green-white-black, like he can’t decide which side to turn to. Like he doesn’t know which is the lesser evil. “Hi. I missed you a lot.”

“Oh, Shin,” says Jaren. It almost feels like there is a hand on Shin’s nova-hot cheek, a thumb tracing vaporized tears, and then he is gone.

Shin doesn’t remember much of anything on his trip around the city on the circle line; is trying so hard to keep himself resembling normalcy and keep attention away from himself. Doesn’t even remember which station he stumbled into or how he managed to navigate his way back. Still, he shudders hard two stops away from his destination—already at Dangsan? Shit, he needs to unboard soon—and people steer clear of the seats around him.

He stumbles past the boundary of the normal world and a half-sanctuary, but instead of saving his energy and letting his glamour go, he only pulls it tighter around him. Shin won’t be able to keep up his usual clean and unbothered appearance, but he’ll be damned if he exposes anyone to the chaos churning his heart into molten glass.

There is still a leftover bowl at Shin’s usual spot, uncleared, but Shin makes a beeline for it anyway. He sags against the wall, trembling fingers clenched tight around his forearms that itch and hurt and burn. When he opens his eyes after a moment, the space before him has been cleared and wiped clean. A single glass of iced barley tea sits just slightly to his left. The condensation trickles slowly down the sides.

“Aren’t you a hot mess,” says Wu Ming. He keeps his voice quiet, like he’s trying to offer Shin some sense of privacy. “Long night?”

Shin’s sharp laugh sounds more like a sob, and he somehow finds the strength to unclench his fingers and wrap his shaking hands around the glass of tea. It is hard to feel the chill, and he hopes that he can keep it together enough to prevent the glass from melting in his grip.

There’s movement before him again, but Shin does not pay any mind to it. He is busy trying to regulate his breathing into an artificial sort of calm, holding his breath until his lungs ache before exhaling slowly, then breathing in even more slowly. Suddenly there is something being held out to him. He blinks at the shapes and letters for a long while before he recognizes the B.B.Big ice cream bar, unwrapped at the bottom so he can slide out the sugary red-bean snack with little hassle.

He glances up at Wu Ming, whose left cheek bulges with the shape of a blood lollipop. The vampire’s gaze is neutral, assessing. Shin looks down at the snack and takes a big bite out of it immediately. His teeth ache something fierce from the sudden chill, but he doesn’t care. It is different from burning too hot and that’s all that matters.

“Never seen someone eat a popsicle in just three damn bites,” Wu Ming says, his usual flirtatious inflection nowhere to be found. “How the hell’s your mouth okay?”

“It’s fine,” Shin says with no real thought.

“I’m sure it is,” Wu Ming says, but he looks perturbed. “Ain’t ever seen you this unraveled, brother.”

“Still interested in biting?” Shin asks, licking the popsicle stick clean of any sugary remnants before setting it aside. His hands are not trembling anymore. The ice in the barley tea has long since melted. Shin takes a drink of it, and the cold has warmed enough to edge on being lukewarm.

Wu Ming barks out a laugh, less guarded than before. “I’m more interested in what’s gotten you so,” he gestures toward Shin, “Hot and bothered.” He leans in like he usually does, arms crossed across the counter and close enough Shin could reach out to touch him.

And while Shin’s frenzy has calmed down enough he longer feels like he will combust and set the whole block aflame, the heat still simmers just beneath his skin. The burns criss crossing his fingers have scored into his hands and wrists, his forearms. Shin still feels the aches acutely and tries to ignore the sharp twinge of pain when he reaches up to wipe his mouth clean. Above all, he tries to forget the sense of loss that has come to haunt him over and over again.

“Wu Ming, we have more customers,” one of the other cooks shouts from the stove, standing before a large bubbling pot that looks more like a cauldron of boiling wheat noodles. More faces line the seats Shin normally sees as empty at late, late hours. Wu Ming clicks his tongue, glancing over momentarily before turning his attention back to Shin.

  
“You’ll be back,” he says, one hand sliding over the bar. It’s only half a question. Shin stands up, still feeling like he is two seconds from bursting out of his mortal skin, and leans in slightly.

“Maybe,” he murmurs, pressing two scalding fingers to the back of Wu Ming’s hand. The vampire does not flinch at the twin points burning into his flesh, but his dagger grin is a touch pained, and a touch of something else. 

Shin turns away and leaves. He finds the nearest empty alley and carves a haphazard portal into nowhere. Loss and anger claws at his insides and leaves him gutted and hollow. He scorches through the pretense of humanity and shatters the darkness with an inferno so bright he _hungers_. 

Seongdo watches him, impassive and scolding all at once. The gwisin holds his tongue, but only just. Shin’s fire fizzles out as quickly as it had combusted, leaving him charred and blackened, only recognizable by the eternal smolder of his golden eyes.

“You can rest here for now,” Seongdo says, resigned. But Shin has already closed his eyes, collapsed into a pile of slumbering, dreaming cinders.

* * *


End file.
